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So the Catherine remake, Catherine Full Body was released a few days ago. It is, as described by the devs/writers, an unconventional romantic horror. It is one of the most bizarre and amazing games I have ever played. One of my absolute favorite games ever. If you haven't played it, fucking do it.

Story:

So to quote the wiki:

A very brief summery is that you take the roll of Vincent Brooks and go through a week of his life dealing with his girlfriend, Katherine, an unintentional affair with Catherine and the antics that it brings about. That kind of put me off of the game in the beginning, but once I actually started playing, I kind of fell in love with this game. You also interact with a pretty interesting group of characters in the Stray Sheep, and your interactions with them affect certain parts of the game.

Full Body adds a new love interest, Rin, as well as a ton more story stuff. I had originally though the changes would be pretty minor, but they added a ton of shit. In addition to the fairly heavy changes to the main story that Rin makes, they added a bunch of new cut scenes. Some of said new scenes flesh out your relationship with Katherine and how it started and what not. There are also five new endings, bringing the total up to like thirteen. Its not an especially long game, however, so you can knock them out fairly quickly.

My initial reservations of the story not really being for me aside, I actually really enjoyed the story. It starts out fairly standard but starts getting fairly weird the longer it goes on. And I really like a lot of the characters outside of the main cast as well. Erica and Toby's relationship also amused the shit out of me for reasons that will be fairly obvious once you get who Erica is.

Gameplay:

Gameplay wise, its split up into two halves, kind of like Persona. Instead of Dungeon crawling and monster battles, you have puzzles.

Half of the gameplay takes place in the real world, which are divided into two parts, themselves. The majority of the story is shown through scenes, and the rest leaves you in control of Vincent as he spends his nights in the bar, the Stray Sheep, talking with his friends, other patrons, and the employees. As I said above, you can change certain aspects of the story by talking with the patrons, influencing their chances of survival.

The second half is the nightmare, which takes the form of a climbing puzzle. (Gameplay trailer below should give a fair idea of how it works.) With the exception of the first and eighth stage, which have only one, each stage has between two and six levels to clear each night. The final level of each stage (save for the first, which lacks a boss) you clear adds a boss, with its own attacks and hazards to avoid. They range from fairly easy to pretty damned hard. Later stages have hazard blocks to avoid such as ice blocks (which cause you to slide), bomb blocks (in two flavors, each with a different blast radius), and black hole blocks, among others. The objective is to reach the top as blocks on the lower levels begin to slowly fall away.

Between each level is a landing, containing characters, a save point, a merchant, and the confessional, which takes you to the next level. Some of the characters on the landing affect your story, some will teach you new techniques for climbing and the merchant will sell you items to help in the coming level. You can only carry one item at a time, however, so it replaces the one you currently hold. The confessional acts as both a transition to the next level and another means of influencing the story.

Tip: Going into the bathroom of the Stray Sheep and washing your face will also give you a brief hint as to the boss you will be facing next.

Full Body changes up the gameplay by added a special puzzle option, Remix mode. Remix mode adds some new mechanics as well as combination blocks. Combination blocks being blocks you'd find in something like tetris. Z-Blocks, (verticle and horizontal) line blocks, cross blocks, etc. Not exclusive to Remix mode, Rin can also occasionally help you with slowing the fall of blocks by playing piano.

Spoiler: Gameplay Trailer

The Stray Sheep also has an arcade you can play called Repunzel. It has 128 stages, divided into Repunzel and Repunzel Extra. Both have a normal and a true ending, the true earned by collecting 4 rosaries found on specific stages. Gameplay is sort of similar to the nightmare, however there is no time limit to completing each level and you only get 3 attempts each night. The video in the spoiler below is a walkthrough for the first stage to give an idea of how its changed from the nightmare puzzles.

Spoiler: Repunzel Gameplay

Be aware, however, that the remix mode option also affects Repunzel's stages as well. Meaning Repunzel technically has 256 stages.

There is also an online component to the game as well. It has both co-op and versus gameplay, with random and ranked variations. Full Body also added a neat feature that has "souls" appearing where other players died, kind of like Dark Souls' bloodstain mechanic.

Soundtrack:

The composer is the absolutely godlike Shoji Meguro, which should immediately give you an idea of how fucking good the music is. In the spoiler below is the new intro, an acid jazz remix of the original theme, Yo! The rest of the soundtrack is largely unchanged from the original, but there are a lot of new tracks as well. The Jukebox in the bar also has some great tracks from other Atlus games including Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 (Golden, Arena, and Dancing all Night), and even from the Project Re: Fantasy trailers.

Spoiler: Intro Theme, Yo (Acid Jazz Version)

My final though? Buy this game. It is sincerely amazing and you will not regret it.